A-ha "Take On Me (Single & Video)"

"Take On Me" is a song by Norwegian synthpop band A-ha, first released in 1984. The self-composed original version was produced by Tony Mansfield, and remixed by John Ratcliff. The second version was produced by Alan Tarney for the group's debut studio album Hunting High and Low (1985). The song combines synthpop with a varied instrumentation that includes acoustic guitars, keyboards and drums.

The original "Take On Me" was recorded in 1984 and it took two versions and three releases to finally chart in the United Kingdom, reaching number two on the UK Singles Chart in October 1985. In the United States in October 1985, the song became the only A-ha song to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100, due in no small part to the wide exposure on MTV of its innovative music video, directed by Steve Barron. The video features the band in a live-action pencil-sketch sequence. The video won six awards and was nominated for two others at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards.

Pål Waaktaar and Magne Furuholmen began their music careers playing in a band called Bridges together with Viggo Bondi and Øystein Jevanord. In 1981, the band produced Fakkeltog (Torch-light parade), an LP for which all of the music was composed by the group themselves, most of it being written by Waaktaar. One of the tracks rehearsed at this time (although not included on the LP) was called "The Juicy Fruit Song". It included elements of the future "Take On Me", including an early version of the central riff. Soon after, Bridges disbanded. Waaktaar and Furuholmen relocated to London to try their hand in the music industry there, but after six months of disappointment they returned to Norway.


The duo asked Morten Harket to join as lead singer. At the time, Harket was singing in a band called Souldier Blue, but he felt that his band was stagnating, and decided to join Waaktaar and Furuholmen. They stayed together for six months, writing some songs and working on demo tapes, including "Lesson One", a new song based on "The Juicy Fruit Song" which would in turn evolve into "Take On Me". In January 1983, the trio returned to London in search of a recording contract

The first release of "Take On Me" in 1984 includes a completely different recording, and was featured in the first video, which shows the band singing with a blue background.

The second video, directed by Irish-born British film director Steve Barron, is the more widely recognized video for the song. It was filmed in 1985 at Kim's Café (now called Savoy Café) (on Wandsworth Road, London SW8), and on a sound stage in London. The video used a pencil-sketch animation / live-action combination called rotoscoping, in which the live-action footage is traced over frame by frame to give the characters realistic movements. Approximately 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, which took 16 weeks to complete.

The video's main theme is a romantic fantasy narrative. It begins with a montage of pencil drawings in a comic-book style representing motorcycle sidecar racing, in which the hero, played by Morten Harket, is pursued by two opponents, one of whom is played by English actor Philip Jackson. It then cuts to a scene in a cafe, in which a young woman, played by Bunty Bailey (Harket's girlfriend at the time), is seen drinking coffee and reading the comic book in a coffee shop. As the woman reads, the waitress brings her the bill. The comic's hero, after winning the race, seemingly winks at the woman from the page. His pencil-drawn hand reaches out of the comic book, inviting the woman into it. Once inside, she too appears in the pencil-drawn form, as he sings to her and introduces her to his black-and-white world which features a sort of looking-glass portal where people and objects look real on one side and pencil-drawn on the other.

Back in the restaurant, the waitress returns to find the woman missing. Believing that the woman has left without paying the bill, she angrily crumples and throws the woman's comic book into a bin. This makes the hero's two opposing racers reappear, armed with a large pipe wrench. The racers smash the looking glass with the pipe wrench, trapping the woman in the comic book. The hero punches one of the thugs and retreats with the woman into a maze of paper. Arriving at a dead end, he tears a hole in the paper wall so that the woman can escape as the menacing opposing racers close in on him. The woman, now back in the real world and found lying beside the bin to the surprise of restaurant guests and staff, retrieves the comic from the bin and runs home, where she attempts to smooth out the creases to learn what happens next.

The next panel shows the hero lying seemingly lifeless, and the woman begins to cry. But he wakes up and tries to break out of his comic-book frames. At the same time, his image appears in the woman's hallway, seemingly torn between real and comic form, hurling himself repeatedly left-and-right against the walls as he attempts to shatter his two-dimensional barrier. (This scene is largely patterned after a climactic scene in the 1980 film Altered States.) He escapes from the comic book by becoming human and stands up. Smiling, the woman runs towards him and he embraces her. The video story is effectively concluded in the intro sequence of its successor, "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.".

At the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, the video for "Take On Me" won six awards—Best New Artist in a Video, Best Concept Video, Most Experimental Video, Best Direction in a Video, Best Special Effects in a Video, and Viewer's Choice—and was nominated for two others, Best Group Video and Video of the Year. It was also nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Video at the 13th American Music Awards in 1986.

The second music video was produced by Limelight Productions. The crew of the video were director Steve Barron, producer Simon Fields, cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, editor Richard Simpson from Rushes Film Editing, and animators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger.


As of January 2019, the music video has over 820 million views on YouTube. The video has been subject to various parodies. The Family Guy episode, "Breaking Out Is Hard to Do", includes a licensed, re-edited version of the "Take On Me" video. Volkswagen created a television advertisement inspired by the video. The "Take On Me" video was one of the first to be made into a literal music video. A hidden section in the video game Just Cause 4 renders the game similar to the video, including the song running in the background while the player is within it.